Is Obama serious about chemical weapons?

The goal of any U.S. military action in Syria, U.S. President Barack Obama tells us, would be to prevent the future use of chemical weapons and to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for his misdeeds.

“I have no interest in any kind of open-ended conflict in Syria,” Obama insisted during his interview Wednesday with CBS’s Gwen Ifill, “but we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable.”

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Before American cruise missiles reach their targets, however, several crucial diplomatic steps must be taken to not only stop the further use of nerve gases by the Syrian regime against its own people, but to prevent the use of chemical weapons from becoming the region’s “new normal.”

At the top of the list should be presentation of a resolution to the United Nations Security Council calling for changes in the enforcement and surveillance of chemicals used in the manufacture of organophosphate (OP) nerve gases, such as the sarin gas the Assad government allegedly used to kill more than 355 civilians in an Aug. 21st attack on a Damascus suburb.

Nerve gases such as sarin, VX, and VR are already “illegal” in the sense that 184 nations have since 1993 signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), agreeing to destroy all stockpiles and cease manufacture of the gases, designated “Schedule One” compounds under the treaty – designating actual nerve gases. Some of the chemical precursors used in manufacture of the deadly nerve gases are also designated Schedule One compounds, though the legality of their stockpiling, trade, and manufacture is considerably more nebulous. There is no good reason for this.

In his PBS interview, Obama referred to Syria as “a country that has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world, where over time, their control over chemical weapons may erode, where they’re allied to known terrorist organizations that, in the past, have targeted the United States, then there is a prospect, a possibility, in which chemical weapons that can have devastating effects could be directed at us.”

Last December, the New York Times reported that the Assad government was moving some of its 500 metric tons of sarin in apparent preparation for an attack. But it wasn’t actually sarin, according to intelligence sources — it was good old-fashioned isopropyl alcohol and methylphosphonyl difluoride, the key precursor chemical. The stockpile was stored in a form developed during the 1980s in the United States, as M687 binary weapons — all of which were decommissioned and destroyed by the United States by 2006. Syria, however, preferred the binary technology because it makes storage and transport of the chemicals safer (though hardly risk-free). On detonation, the benign cargo immediately becomes lethal nerve gas.

A launchable shell is divided in half — rendered “binary” — by a thin membrane: On one side is rubbing alcohol, on the other, the methylphosphonyl difluoride. Divided, the chemicals pose little hazard, but upon detonation the membrane bursts, the chemicals mix, sarin gas is produced, and it rains down on its targets. The Obama administration confirmed these reports of Syrian transport of binary weapons on Dec. 5, 2012.

Syria never signed the CWC, so technically it has never violated any treaty agreements – but deployment of sarin or any nerve gas clearly contradicts the international norms of rule of law and human rights. Still, the hazy status of precursor compounds under the CWC leaves the international community with shaky legs to stand on in targeting Assad’s binary stockpiles of methylphosphonyl difluoride.

There are 63 chemicals on the CWC Schedule One and Two list, but only a handful are immediate precursor chemicals that can be stored in the form of binary weapons. The only compound on the immediate precursor Schedule One list that has widespread legitimate use outside of weapons production is EMPTA, used in the manufacture of nylon and various pharmaceuticals.